Practical mini-PACS based on a hybrid video and digital network

The Department of Radiology of the Shinshu University Hospital is presently in the process of developing a new type of mini-PACS with a hybrid architecture consisting of a video and a digital image archiving network. The video block consists of a server station with a video write-once optical disk (LD) and three workstations which are connected to two ultrasound imaging devices and an MRI device. The video images from any of these imaging devices are transferred immediately onto an LD. The examiner can observe the archived images immediately without any interruption of the examination. The image transmission time, including the record and play-back, is within 3 s. The digital block consists of a personal computer server and various workstations linked to the ETHERNET. This digital system supports database management, and archives digital images. This prototype system was used for daily clinical examinations from February 1989 to January 1990 and 31,366 images from 1561 patients were stored on the video disk. This one year experience suggests that a hybrid mini-PACS system is practical for total image archiving when the image matrix is less than 512 x 512 and selected digital image archiving.